The Stone Child Read Online Free PDF Page A

Eddie almost expected her to tell him that they were not issuing any new cards, but she reached under her desk, pulled out a piece of paper and a pencil, and handed them to him. Without looking at him, she said, “Fill this out.” Eddie wrote down his new address and phone number and handed the paper back to Mrs. Singh.
    “You’re new in town?” she said curiously. Eddie merely nodded. As she turned around, she began to chew on her lip.
    While he waited for her to process his new card, he flipped through the heavy book. It was filled with all sorts of confusing language—almost as weird as that of
The Enigmatic Manuscript
. Strange words like
cipher, algorithm, scytale, skipjack
, and
cryptanalysis
jumped off the page. There was so much
stuff
shoved between the covers, he wasn’t even sure if he would be able to understand everything.
    “Here you go,” said Mrs. Singh. She handed him a smallpeach-colored paper card on which was printed
Gatesweed Public Library, a place where stories are told
.
    “Thank you,” he said, as politely as possible. Eddie shoved the book in his bag, hiked it onto his shoulders, and struggled to open the library door.
    Once outside, Eddie could not deny that it was a lovely day. Puffy clouds hovered over the hills, and a warm breeze skirted around the corner of the library. When Eddie unlocked his bike, he decided to ride over to the park and flip through his new library book. He crossed Center Street and followed the path through the middle of the town green. Like the rest of the town, the park was strangely deserted. There were several benches planted randomly in the grass. Eddie hopped off his bike and was about to find a place to sit when he heard an odd whispering sound from across the lawn.
    The sound came from the direction of a bronze bust perched on top of a rectangular marble pedestal. The gray slab stood in the center of an old granite circle. Dandelions filled wide spaces where the slate had cracked over time. A plaque was attached to the front of the pedestal, but from where he stood, Eddie couldn’t read what it said. He rested his bike on the sidewalk and trampled across the tall grass.
    When he got closer, Eddie could see that the face of the bust had been destroyed, as if by a large blunt instrument. The nose had been mashed flat. Where its eyes should have been were two dark holes. Its lips were mangled into apermanent gaping howl. As he got even closer, the whispering sound grew louder.
    Whist-whist-whist-whist-whist-whist
.
    It almost seemed as though the head was trying to speak to him through its distorted mouth. Eddie’s hands went numb. He clutched the straps of his book bag against his shoulders. The pungent smell of bleach filled the air. How strange, he thought. Then, from the edge of the stone circle, he realized he could finally read the plaque: DEXTER AUGUST , 1717-1779.
    Sam had mentioned this place. Eddie had actually found one of Olmstead’s inspirations! Nathaniel Olmstead had written about the bust of Dexter August in
The Ghost in the Poet’s Mansion
. It wasn’t quite how Eddie had pictured it when he’d read the book; in Nathaniel Olmstead’s version, Mr. August’s face had not been vandalized.
    The sound of something splashing came from the other side of the statue, startling Eddie. He stumbled off the edge of the granite circle.
    A second later, he noticed a face peering at him from around the marble base. Before he could see it clearly, the face disappeared and the whispering sound began again. “Hello?” he said, trying to keep his voice from shaking. Keeping his distance from the bust, Eddie made his way to the other side.
    A skinny man dressed in a wrinkly blue uniform knelt in the center of the granite circle. He scrubbed at the marblepedestal with a heavy wood brush.
Whist-whist-whist-whist-whist-whist
. Beside him sat a squat red metal bucket. After a moment, Eddie realized the man was the same police officer who had abandoned his